Afternoon Rally Breaks a Losing Trend for the Market

Domestic markets were up across the board today, with the Dow, NASDAQ, and the S&P 500 all gaining slightly. The Dow added 38.82 points to close at 18,135.72, NASDAQ was up 15.67 to 4,982.81, and the S&P 500 gained 2.51 points to end the day at 2,101.04. The big story of the day in overseas trading was the continued fall of the Hang Seng exchange in Hong Kong. It lost another -272.50 points today, and closed at 24,207.08. The Hang Seng is down 695 points over the past 5 days.

Social Media Stock Trends Are Mixed. Social media stocks have been a roller coaster lately, with Facebook (FB) and LinkedIn (LNKD) at TTM highs and Twitter (TWTR) down almost 13% on the year.

Restaurant review site Yelp (YELP) is in even worse shape, down over 50% since this time last year. In trading today, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Yelp were up slightly, while Twitter continued to fall. Facebook (FB) is at $81.21 per share, LinkedIn (LNKD) closed at $268.34, Yelp (YELP) was up to $47.94, and Twitter (TWTR) dropped -$0.22 per share to end trading at $47.35.

IBM Pushing Back Against Late-February Drop. Major tech player International Business Machines (IBM) saw a big dip in share prices toward the middle of last month, and it spent the last half of February and the first week of March playing catch up. The stock is still almost $2.50 off of its high last month, but it's showing steady progress. Today, IBM added another $1.76 to close trading at $161.18 per share.

Dollar Rises To Record Highs Vs. Euro. There's no clearer indication of how much better America's recovery has been compared to the rest of the world than the falling price of the Euro. The currency has fallen through the floor, and is at record lows of only 1.10 US Dollar per Euro, down from highs of 1.58 before the economic collapse of 2008. While America's recovery has been slow, much of Europe has stalled out entirely.

Transocean Dove At The End Of Trading Today. Offshore oil driller Transocean (RIG) sank at the end of trading today, as the stock lost 3% in less than an hour. Share prices fell -$0.60 cents to $16.00. Before the drop, Transocean was set to close even on the day.

Grocery Store Kroger Up On Great Q4. Kroger (KR) stores had a much better than expected fourth quarter, beating sales forecasts and outstripping projected earnings. The stock broke an 8-day losing streak on the news, and gained 4.66 points to close at $74.31 per share.

Regeneron And Vertex Pharma Both Gain. Health services remains the sector to beat, having lead market growth nearly every day for the past month. It rose another 9.76% today, with drug makers Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX) and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN) leading the way. Vertex was up 5.76%, or $6.91 per share, to close at $126.96. Regeneron shot up $15.91 per share to close the day's trading at $428.95.